Queen Hortense eBook

“He lies in his throat,” says Bourrienne,
“who asserts that Bonaparte entertained other
feelings for Hortense than those a step-father should
entertain for his step-daughter! Hortense entertained
for the first consul a feeling of reverential fear.
She always spoke to him tremblingly. She never
ventured to approach him with a petition. She
was in the habit of coming to me, and I then submitted
her wishes; and only when Bonaparte received them
unfavorably did I mention the name of the petitioner.
‘The silly thing!’ said the first consul;
’why does she not speak to me herself?
Is she afraid of me?’ Napoleon always entertained
a fatherly affection for her; since his marriage,
he loved her as a father would have loved his child.
I, who for years was a witness of her actions in the
most private relations of life, I declare that I have
never seen or heard the slightest circumstance that
would tend to convict her of a criminal intimacy.
One must consider this calumny as belonging to the
category of those which malice so willingly circulates
about those persons whose career has been brilliant,
and which credulity and envy so willingly believe.
I declare candidly that, if I entertained the slightest
doubt with regard to this horrible calumny, I would
say so. But Bonaparte is no more! Impartial
history must not and shall not give countenance to
this reproach; she should not make of a father and
friend a libertine! Malicious and hostile authors
have asserted, without, however, adducing any proof,
that a criminal intimacy existed between Bonaparte
and Hortense. A falsehood, an unworthy falsehood!
And this report has been generally current, not only
in France, but throughout all Europe. Alas! can
it, then, be true that calumny exercises so mighty
a charm that, when it has once taken possession of
a man, he can never be freed from it again?”

CHAPTER V.

KING OR EMPEROR.

Josephine’s entreaties had been fruitless, or
Bonaparte had, at least, only yielded to them in their
literal sense. She had said: “I entreat
you, do not make yourself a king!” Bonaparte
did not make himself king, he made himself emperor.
He did not take up the crown that had fallen from
the head of the Bourbons; he created a new one for
himself—­a crown which the French people
and Senate had, however, offered him. The revolution
still stood a threatening spectre behind the French
people; its return was feared, and, since the discovery
of the conspiracy of Georges, Moreau, and Pichegru,
the people anxiously asked themselves what was to
become of France if the conspirators should succeed
in murdering Bonaparte; and when the republic should
again be sent adrift, without a pilot, on the wild
sea of revolution. The people demanded that their
institutions should be securely established and maintained,
and believed that this could only be accomplished
by a dynasty—­by a monarchical form of government.
The consulate for life must therefore be changed into
an hereditary empire. Had not Bonaparte himself
said: “One can be emperor of a republic,
but not king of a republic; these two terms are incompatible!”
They desired to make Napoleon emperor, because they
flattered themselves that in so doing they should still
be able to preserve the republic.